Tag Archives: debts

Stephanie Kelton’s keynote address to the students, faculty, and visitors at Augustana College’s (Sioux Falls, SD) Undergraduate Research Symposium on Saturday, April 12, 2014 at 10am. Stephanie begins at 2:40. The topic of the keynote is Debt and Deficits in the Modern Economy. The slides are available below the video.

I get a huge volume of e-mail, but I don’t get the kind of hostile stuff that guys like Joe Weisenthal and Paul Krugman sometimes joke about. I got one today, though, and boy is this guy steaming over my MMT coloring book! Here’s the message:

It’s hard not to sympathize with a guy like this. He apparently has kids, and he’s scared to death that his children and grandchildren will suffer real harm because Washington won’t get its fiscal house in order. And why wouldn‘t he think that? I mean, really. Politicians on both sides of the aisle have spent decades labeling the government’s finances a “fiscal train wreck” that will leave future generations with a “crushing burden of debt.” The mainstream media hypes these fears on a daily basis, and even NPR appears to be shilling for the debt scolds.

So it’s no wonder a guy like this is blasting me. He had probably never before encountered anything that rejects, so forcefully, the entire compilation of debt and deficit tropes.

He doesn’t strike me as a particularly open-minded guy, but I think I’ll send him this list of suggested readings anyhow. Maybe he hasn’t finished his holiday shopping.

Nearly everyone believes that Uncle Sam is like a family that must get money before it can spend. But that is not true. A basic function of any sovereign government is to create and run the country’s money system. Unlike a family, the US government is sovereign. It creates money and can never run out. All the words about America’s financial limits mean nothing.